The Reich’s romance with the Renaissance

For Germans, as for others, the late 19th and early 20th centuries marked the high era of nation-building. Most obviously, this manifested itself in increasingly strident, and sometimes thoroughly intolerant, attempts to define a canon of national culture—not only in the visual and plastic arts, but also in music, literature and architecture. But the formation of national identity also took place in dialogue with the culture of others: arguments about the history of others were simultaneo